


Phantom

by chiiyo86



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Case Fic, Gen, Role Reversal, Undercover, ghost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: An undercover mission in France has Sebastian pretending he's 'Lord Phantomhive' while Ciel poses as his valet. In order to fulfill his assignment, Ciel will have to look at things from a new angle.





	Phantom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piscaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/gifts).



> This takes place in a nebulous future; I don't refer to the current storyline, since we don't know how it's going to get resolved. Hope you enjoy the fic!

The fact that it had been his idea, as Sebastian was wont to remind him, didn’t make the situation any less awkward. 

“Your manservant is very young, Lord Phantomhive,” said Monsieur Guilloux in heavily accented English. “Dear God, he can’t be a day over fifteen!”

 _I’m eighteen, thank you very much,_ Ciel thought peevishly, but he wasn’t in a position to make comments to their host. Well, _Sebastian_ ’s host, to be precise, but Ciel was currently posing as his valet and was supposed to be as tightly attached to his master as a shoelace. 

“He’s a poor orphan, the son of a late butler of mine,” Sebastian replied with an air of long sufferance—tonight _he_ was Earl Ciel Phantomhive, and probably delighted in the reversal. “His father served me dutifully for many years, and my father before me. I had qualms about leaving him to fend for himself, and he has proven to be reasonably competent.”

As he spoke, Sebastian rested a gloved hand heavily on the nape of Ciel’s neck, as though petting a faithful dog. Ciel resisted the urge to snarl and shake off the hand, since it would most certainly ruin their cover.

“Your generosity honours you,” Monsieur Guilloux said. “But please, let me give you a tour of my _manoir_.”

Monsieur Guilloux, though not from a noble family himself, was the proud owner of a mansion near Saint-Brieuc in Brittany, about twelve miles from the sea. He owed his wealth to the opening of a _grand magasin_ in Rennes and seemed extremely keen on showing his appreciation to Lord Phantomhive as the head of a similarly successful business venture. His admiration would have been gratifying if Ciel hadn’t been forced to witness _Sebastian_ being showered with it. 

A genial little man sporting an abundant moustache, Monsieur Guilloux looked as harmless as they came, with his round face, his rounder waist, and his sparkling grey eyes circled with metal-framed glasses. Belying that benign appearance were Her Majesty’s suspicions that he was a spy for the French republican state. He travelled to England often, especially to London, having various business interests there as well as a cousin married to a member of the gentry. Now, matters of spies and international intrigues weren’t normally part of Ciel’s attributions, but the last spy sent by the crown to assess Monsieur Guilloux had gone missing, which meant that Her Majesty had judged it was time for another approach. More to the point, it appeared that Monsieur Guilloux had met Ciel’s predecessor in the past, which granted Ciel easy entry to the businessman’s home. 

Guilloux couldn’t have known the late Lord Phantomhive all that well, though, if he didn’t realize that Sebastian looked too old to be either of Vincent’s sons. Or maybe he knew it and was hiding his knowledge well, Ciel thought as he trailed after his ‘master’ and Monsieur Guilloux, trying to covertly examine the man and get a sense of the building’s layout at the same time. 

As if reading his mind, Sebastian asked Monsieur Guilloux, “When did you meet my father, _monsieur_? I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

“Oh, about twenty years ago! Your father was a very young man, then. Was he even married to your mother? I can’t remember, but I know at least that I didn’t have the pleasure to meet her. An incisive young man, your father. Very intelligent. You resemble him a lot.”

“You’re too kind, sir,” Sebastian murmured.

Ciel wouldn’t have been born yet. Had Monsieur Guilloux been one of Vincent’s shady contacts? Not according to Her Majesty’s informants, but he looked to be in his late forties, early fifties, so he couldn’t have been very old himself, and he hadn’t been the successful businessman he was now. Monsieur Guilloux prattled away about his _manoir_ , an edifice from the 1800s built with the sandstones of an abbey from the 17th century. It was a stout, rectangle building, crowned with several imposing chimneys and a roof of thick slates, that sat in the middle of a two-acres park. A fifteenth-century chapel was attached to the northern end of it. The inside of the mansion was cool, echoing, dark with wood panelling and beamed ceilings. As Sebastian and Monsieur Guilloux retired to one of the first floor’s parlours, Ciel went on with his mission. 

It was expected of him to go downstairs with the other servants, and he would have to, eventually, but he wanted to make the most of his time while no one’s eyes were on him. He didn’t have much faith in his ability to convincingly pass as a servant with people who had the same job. His outlandish band of servants was _not_ the right model to base his behaviour on, not to mention that he was already under some suspicion for being so young and for being English. He’d heard some truly preposterous comments about the nature of his relationship with Sebastian, murmured in French by some of the servants who assumed he couldn’t understand the language—he’d done nothing to contradict that assumption, of course, in case they let anything more interesting slip. 

His assignment wasn’t to find proof of Monsieur Guilloux being a spy, but only to discover what had happened to the man that Her Majesty had already sent. A young man in his early thirties, Coleman Paterson had posed as a merchant who wanted to sell his products in Monsieur Guilloux’s _magasin_. He’d left for France three months earlier, and he’d never come back or messaged his superiors in any way. It meant that he’d either been killed or bought, and Ciel was supposed to find out which one it was. Padding silently through the corridors, he made his way to the second floor, where Monsieur Guilloux’s private quarters were. He found the man’s office and searched it thoroughly, sifting through the documents piled on the writing desk, opening every drawer with an eye for false bottoms, looking under the carpet, behind the books on the shelves. One of the drawers was locked and Ciel forced it open with a pocketknife he’d brought for that purpose, but it only contained several ledgers filled with the details of Monsieur Guilloux’s business transactions. 

Disappointed at having found nothing of worth, Ciel sighed and considered his options. How long until someone started wondering where he might have gone? The whole purpose of switching roles was to give him the occasion to snoop around while Sebastian entertained Monsieur Guilloux, but Ciel knew that as a valet, he had to be available at every moment in case his master needed him. This was why he should have been downstairs, where he could be rung for. Hopefully, he would get more occasions to look around the mansion and find traces of Coleman Paterson’s visit later.

Before he exited the office, he listened at the door, then half-opened it to glance outside, wanting to make sure that no one would see him leave a room where he had no business to be. The corridor was silent, but as Ciel was about to get out he caught movement at the corner of his eye and hurriedly stepped back inside. He waited for a few long heartbeats, but when he couldn’t hear anyone walk past the room, he risked another look outside. There was no one, so he stepped out of Guilloux’s office and quietly closed the door behind him. The air in the corridor was still and chilly; Ciel contained a shiver before heading downstairs.

As he’d expected, Monsieur Guilloux’s servants looked at him sideways when he entered the kitchen. When he sat down at the central table with them to share their _souper_ , he got more than one haughty or derisive glance cast at him. The cook, a large woman with a red face and a wild mane of brown hair, barked at him a question in French with a regional accent so thick that Ciel didn’t have to fake his incomprehension.

“Beg your pardon?” he asked in English, trying to look suitably guileless.

“Your name,” one of the footmen said in Ciel’s own tongue.

“Oh. It’s John, ma’am.”

The cook grumbled something and proceeded to ignore Ciel. The footman who’d spoken English, a blond man probably barely a few years older than Ciel, leaned toward the man sitting next to him, saying, “ _Il a un bien joli minois, ce John._ ”

 _What a pretty face._ Ciel grit his teeth and focused on his food, pretending he hadn’t understood the man. The servants thinking he couldn’t understand French had the advantage of giving Ciel an excuse for not making conversation. That way, he had less opportunities of betraying himself. He ate in silence, an ear out for the conversation that flowed around him freely. Some of them spoke with an accent that made it hard for him to understand them, although none was as bad as the cook’s, but Ciel managed to get the gist of what was being said. Unfortunately, what he got was mostly gossip about people he didn’t know or care about, and comments about how handsome ‘Lord Phantomhive’ was—it was a good thing Sebastian wasn’t present to hear this, because there would be no end to his preening. 

This was the downside of pretending he couldn’t speak their language: if he’d talked to them, he could have oriented the conversation on recent visitors to the mansion. If he betrayed his linguistic knowledge now, though, it would only result in making them tongue-tied. None of the servants referred to Coleman Paterson, either in name or obliquely, at least as far as Ciel could tell. They might have known nothing of what had happened to the British spy, or they were cautious enough that they didn’t want to discuss it in front of a stranger, even one whom they assumed understood nothing of what they said. 

Ciel had been slightly afraid that Sebastian would take advantage of his temporary position as the master by ringing for him incessantly. To his credit, the demon didn’t yield to the temptation. Maybe he’d been trying to give Ciel time to explore the mansion, but it turned out to be impossible for Ciel to escape the other servants’ scrutiny. He already knew, from what they’d said in front of him, that they found him too quiet, too frail, too pretty, and thought that he looked down on them because he served a lord and they didn’t, or because he was a ‘British prick.’ The inanity of their comments and the relentlessness of their focus on him both bored and annoyed to the point of madness. When Sebastian finally rang for him, announcing that he was retiring for the night, it came as a profound relief. 

The rooms assigned to ‘Lord Phantomhive’ were on the same floor as Monsieur Guilloux’s own chambers, so close that one might have suspected their host to want to keep an eye on his guest. Once they were inside the dressing room and fairly certain that no one was around, Ciel allowed himself to relax a little and lose the air of quiet diffidence he’d adopted so far. Sebastian turned to him, arching an expectant eyebrow.

“I hope you don’t seriously think that I’m going to help you undress,” Ciel said, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Sebastian let a few seconds tick by, long enough for the insolent suggestion that he just might ask Ciel to act as his valet to hang in the air, before he smiled brightly. “Of course not, my lord,” he said in a deferent tone of voice. “I was merely wondering if you’d found anything of interest.”

“Unfortunately not,” Ciel said with a frustrated sigh. “I had the time to look through Guilloux’s office, but found nothing, which I guess isn’t so surprising. Afterward, I couldn’t get away from the other servants without raising suspicions. I was supposed to spend the evening waiting for _your_ call, after all.”

Sebastian’s smile was slow and satisfied, but he wisely refrained from any sardonic comment. “I managed to start Monsieur Guilloux on the topic of Coleman Paterson,” he said. “I claimed to be familiar with the man. Monsieur Guilloux didn’t deny having received him, but he says that Paterson left the estate safe and sound.”

“I will have more time to explore the mansion during the night,” Ciel said. “Even if Guilloux has made the effort to rid the mansion of all traces of Paterson’s passage, he might have got careless.”

“Will you require my assistance, young master?” Sebastian asked.

“You’re a little close to Guilloux for comfort,” Ciel said. “I’ll call for you if I need any help. If all fails, we can probably scare Guilloux into telling us what happened to Paterson.”

“A most astute plan, young master,” Sebastian said. Ciel only dignified the jab with an eye roll. 

He was supposed to share a room on the last floor with two other servants. They fell asleep quickly and noisily, so he didn’t have to wait for long before he could slip outside the room unnoticed. To better be able to see in the darkness, he took off his eyepatch; even if he came across someone, it would be hard for them to notice the pattern on his eye at night.

Where should he investigate? Searching Guilloux’s office had left him empty-handed, and his rooms were of course out of the question while the man slept in them. As he was considering this, Ciel walked past what he knew from Guilloux’s tour to be a library. He stopped, tempted to have a look inside. He had to start somewhere, after all, and didn’t spies have books that they used for ciphers? Maybe he’d read too many of Sir Conan Doyle’s novels, but the library was a room that Paterson would have probably frequented during his visit, and it might have kept traces of him. 

The library was rather smaller in size than Ciel liked for himself, and it smelled musty, as though it wasn’t used very often. It was tempting to switch on the electric lights that Ciel knew Guilloux had had installed, but even if everyone was supposed to be sleeping, the brash light felt like he would be begging to be found out. Fortunately, Ciel had thought of this and had brought with him matches and a piece of candle. He lit it up and slowly moved it in an arc so he could take stock of his surroundings. Only one of the walls was covered by book shelves, and the one facing it was occupied by a large portrait of Monsieur Guilloux, posing like an aristocrat of old. Ciel’s upper lip curled up in a sneer and he shook his head, directing his attention to the books and the shelves. There mostly were political pamphlets and books on botanic, with a few novels, both in French and English. Monsieur Guilloux apparently enjoyed Alexandre Dumas, which made Ciel consider him with slightly more favour. But a thin layer of dust on the shelves indicated that none of the books had been moved in a while, so Ciel turned away from the shelves.

Besides an armchair next to the window and a dark, empty fireplace, there was nothing else of interest in the room, but Ciel’s attention was drawn to a darker spot on the carpet next to the armchair. He knelt by it, casting the quivering light of his candle upon it. It was faint and brownish, and had obviously been scrubbed hard enough that the carpet was a little damaged from the effort. The stain was as large as a dinner plate and shaped unevenly, as though a liquid had spilled and spread over it. Of course, Ciel’s mind immediately went to blood, but there was no way to tell for sure. 

He was so focused on his observations that it was only when he could see the white cloud of his frozen breath that he realized how cold it had got in the room. The fingers of the hand that wasn’t holding the candle had gone numb from it. The hair on the nape of Ciel’s neck rose up in a familiar feeling of alarm; he’d heard nothing, but he was suddenly sure that he wasn’t alone in the library anymore. He slowly, inconspicuously slid a hand in his pocket to retrieve his knife before he stood up and turned around.

What he saw then trapped the breath in his lungs: there _was_ someone in there with him, for a certain value of ‘someone.’ It was the pale, shimmering form of a man, faded, indistinct, like a rippling reflection on the surface of a pond. It stood in front of Guilloux’s grotesque portrait, which made Ciel realise that he could see _through_ it. He blinked, but it didn’t make the apparition disappear. He rubbed his right eye, and, for a second, the shimmering phantom was gone, then back again once Ciel was looking at it with his two eyes. _What in heaven is this?_ Experimentally, he covered his right eye and looked at the apparition, but he couldn’t see it anymore. When he covered his other eye and looked with his right one, this time he could see the apparition. 

“Who are you?” he asked out loud. Then, stupidly, “Are you Coleman Paterson?”

The man—for it was a man in his thirties, tall and slim, with a shock of pale blond hair—regarded him with an expression of infinite sorrow. The apparition opened its mouth, but no sound came out. Ciel’s heart was pounding; not from fear, because the phantom didn’t act threatening, but from the implications of what was happening. First, the idea that his right eye, the eye that bore the seal of his contract with Sebastian, could see something that his other eye could not made him deeply uneasy. And second—was this a _ghost_ he was seeing? He’d witnessed many impossible things in his short life, including a demon springing from a puddle of his twin brother’s blood, but the idea that ghosts might exist turned his stomach in a way few things could. 

“What do you want?” he asked again. He shouldn’t have been talking to what might very well be a hallucination, but something about the shimmering man’s pleading expression was hard to ignore. 

He hadn’t expected any reply—whatever the man was, it didn’t seem capable of speaking—but the apparition motioned Ciel before walking to the door, as though it wanted Ciel to follow it—which Ciel did, despite his misgivings.

 _I should call for Sebastian,_ Ciel thought, but he didn’t. He knew that his call would make Sebastian burst out of his room with no care for discretion, and Ciel was still hoping that they might solve this matter without drawing undue attention to themselves. If he felt in danger, then he would summon his butler, but not a moment before. 

The apparition—Ciel’s mind rebelled against calling it a _ghost_ —led Ciel out of the mansion and into the park that surrounded it. The night was opaque, with no moon, not even starlight to brighten it, and the outdoor temperature made Ciel shiver. He pulled the collar of his jacket around his neck to protect it. Thin wisps of vaporous mist floated over the lawns and snaked between the massive oak trees like long, white scarves. Ciel cupped a hand over the fragile flame of his candle, both to shield it from the wind and to hide it from view, in case anyone happened to look through a window.

The apparition, pale and flickering, was sometimes hard to tell apart from the mist, and more than once Ciel lost sight of it. In order not to get stupidly lost in the park, he started to scrape the bark on the trees to mark his way; then he hurried after the apparition, which moved faster and faster, as if it were getting closer from its destination. At some point Ciel had to start trotting after it, the hem of his trousers getting wet from the damp grass. An owl hooted in the distance. A drop of heated wax fell on the bare skin of his hand and Ciel hissed in pain. He was now shaking so hard from the cold that his teeth clattered. 

“This is stupid,” he murmured, just to hear the sound of his own voice. “I’m following a mirage and will probably only get a cold out of it.”

As if sensing his dissatisfaction, the apparition stopped and turned toward Ciel, then waved at him again. Ciel sighed and followed after it; he couldn’t feel his feet anymore from the cold, but he didn’t want to have walked all this way for nothing. At the slightest hint of an attack he would call for Sebastian, but his instinct for danger, honed by years of an eventful life style, wasn’t alerting him yet. 

He and the apparition had been walking down a dirt path before, but they were now leaving the path and walking deeper into a cluster of ancient trees bent from the wind. Ciel took a moment to leave his mark on the trees he walked past; when he was done, he looked for the apparition and saw that it had stopped and stood by a big, gnarled root that protruded from the ground. Ciel approached warily, curling a hand around the knife inside his pocket. He came closer to the apparition than he had before, close enough to examine its face. The features were blurred but looked similar enough to the picture that Ciel had seen of Coleman Paterson. Except that now that Ciel could look at the back of its head, he could see that an ugly wound matted the blond hair with blood. The skull looked like it had caved in, as though someone had hit the man with a heavy object. 

“Who did that to you?” Ciel asked.

Again, the apparition of Coleman Paterson opened its mouth soundlessly, but the sorrowful expression on its face was distorted with anger. He pointed to the ground and Ciel cast his candlelight there; the grass had been disturbed, but not recently, because the earth was packed and hard from the cold. Since Ciel didn’t have any tool but his bare hands, he wouldn’t be able to unearth whatever had been buried on his own. He looked back in direction of the mansion, which was hidden from his view by the trees. 

“Sebastian,” he whispered, pressing the tips of his fingers under his right eye. He’d never tried to communicate to Sebastian from a distance anything more complicated than a cry for help, but this was a night for impossible things and he was curious to see if this would work. “Come right here, but be quiet and inconspicuous.”

He looked back to where the apparition had been standing but couldn’t see it anymore. No amount of rubbing his eyes made it come back, and a trickle of doubt seeped into Ciel’s mind. Had he imagined the whole thing? Was he standing at the bottom of a tree, alone in the frigid night for no reason? There was a faint whisper, a disturbance in the air; when Ciel turned around Sebastian was there, a darker figure silhouetted against a starless night, with two gleaming red eyes like burning embers.

“Good, you’re here,” Ciel said briskly, although in truth he’d been a little startled. “If you could dig at this spot, I think we would find something very interesting.”

“Dear me, you _have_ been busy, young master,” Sebastian said. “I guess I’ll find myself a shovel.”

Sebastian went to find a shovel, then came back with his customary speed. He took off his jacket, which he folded carefully and deposed on a root, then rolled up his sleeves and started digging. As he worked, Ciel sat on the big knotted root, exhaustion draped over him like a heavy cloak. He was on the lookout for a return of the apparition that may or may not have been Coleman Paterson, but it never came back. If Sebastian’s digging uncovered nothing, Ciel was going to feel very stupid.

He heard a dull sound, then Sebastian said, “Oh. Interesting indeed.”

“What is it?” Ciel asked, scrambling forward to peer into the hole Sebastian had dug.

His candle had burned out and he couldn’t see much more than a vague pale shape, but it looked like a body had been wrapped inside a sheet and thrown into the hole. 

“Do you think it’s Coleman Paterson?” Ciel asked to Sebastian.

“If it is, then what do you wish to do, young master?” Sebastian asked. “You were asked to find proof of Mr Paterson’s death. This should do very well.”

Ciel rocked back on his heels and scrutinised the darkness. “Do ghosts exist, Sebastian?” he asked in a low voice.

“What brought up this existential interrogation?” 

Ciel clucked his tongue in irritation. Would that bloody demon simply answer the question! He didn’t want to mention the apparition, because now that it was gone, he was starting to feel as though it may have never been there at all. But if his eye had the ability to see beyond the veil, or whatever had just happened to him, then Sebastian was the only person who could tell him more about it. 

“The reason I came here is… I saw something. Or someone. It looked like the picture I’ve seen of Coleman Paterson, but faint and wispy and… see-through.”

“A ghost, then.”

“Hence the question,” Ciel said snappishly. “Have you ever encountered ghosts? And… do you have any idea as to why I could only see it with my right eye?”

“Interesting,” Sebastian said in the exact same tone of voice he’d used when he’d come upon the dead body in the ground. “I’ve never had a contractor who bore their seal on their eye, so I have no insight on its ability to make you see what you normally couldn’t.”

“And what about ghosts?” Ciel asked again. His heart beat in his throat as he waited for Sebastian’s answer with bated breath. He didn’t know what he hoped for the most—that the demon would tell he’d hallucinated the whole thing, or that he wouldn’t. 

“Sometimes, souls escape their intended reapers,” Sebastian said after a moment of suspenseful silence. “I have seen it. Unfortunately, once those souls have left their bodies for a little while, they taste… stale, and are of no nutritive worth to me. Therefore I’ve never spent much time considering the nature of ghosts.”

“I see,” Ciel said. He tucked his hands under his armpits for warmth. If ghosts were souls that had escaped the reapers, then… at least there was _one_ ghost he didn’t have to fear would resurface. “Let’s see if there’s something on the body that we can take as a proof to bring to Her Majesty.”

To his credit, Monsieur Guilloux may have killed Coleman Paterson, but he hadn’t looted the body. Ciel and Sebastian found a golden pocket watch with an engraved inscription that said, ‘ _To Coleman. With love, A—.’_

“That should do it,” Ciel said. “It’s time to get back to bed.”

As they walked back to the mansion, Ciel kept casting glances around him, hoping or fearing to see the apparition again. Nothing but the tortured shadows of the trees and the ghostly plumes of mist caught his eyes. 

\---

The next day’s awakening was rough on Ciel. He felt sore and stiff all over, his muscles cramped from curling in on himself in an attempt to warm his chilled core. His head ached, and his eyes felt dry and hot. At least he’d accomplished what he’d come here for; now he just needed to play his role for a little longer until they could go back to England.

The petty freedom of being able to gossip in front of him had apparently worn off and the servants were now content to ignore him, which suited Ciel just fine. He ate his breakfast mechanically and then dozed off at the table, until the clear jingle of a bell startled him out of his stupor.

“Your master,” said the footman who spoke English. “Go. Blue parlour on the first floor.”

“Thank you,” Ciel said absently. 

What on earth did Sebastian want with him? They were supposed to leave early in the afternoon—which meant that Ciel should start packing for his ‘master’ very soon, by the way. In a few hours they would leave that gloomy mansion behind them. What need did Sebastian have to bother him _now_?

As the footman had said, Ciel found Sebastian and Monsieur Guilloux sitting in the blue parlour, thus named because the wallpaper was covered with a blue flowery pattern on a lighter blue background. Monsieur Guilloux was smoking a cigar, whose thick smoke tickled the back of Ciel’s throat and made him stifle a cough.

“You asked for me, my lord?” he asked with all the docility he could muster.

“Oh, yes,” Sebastian said. There was twinkle in his eyes that Ciel didn’t like much. “Look at this, John. There’s a stain on the sleeve.”

 _Oh, I see_ , Ciel thought. _Now that we’ve done our job, it’s time for petty revenge._ Still, he played along and leaned to look at the supposed stain. On the cuff of the sleeve was indeed a faint white streak that might have been dust or chalk and would probably be easily wiped off. 

“I’ll take it for a wash and bring a clean one to you, my lord,” Ciel said dully. 

“Good boy,” Sebastian said, which made Ciel clench his jaw. 

Maybe it was because he was annoyed, maybe it was because he was tired, or a mix of both, but when Ciel approached the chair where Sebastian sat, he somehow bumped his hand against a small statue on a pedestal table. The fall of the statue down to the floor felt like it lasted a very long time, but it must have actually been very short because Ciel couldn’t catch it before it bounced on the carpet. Sebastian probably could have, but not without betraying his inhuman reflexes.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Ciel stammered, stooping to pick up the statue, whose fall had fortunately been cushioned by the carpet and which was intact. Ciel put it back on the table, then risked a glance in direction of Monsieur Guilloux.

He’d expected anger at his clumsiness and had been prepared to weather it, but what he got instead was a much more thoughtful look than he was comfortable with. 

“John, how clumsy of you,” Sebastian said, tutting at him. “I apologize on behalf of my servant, _monsieur_ , and I promise I’ll—”

“It’s quite all right,” Monsieur Guilloux said. “Come closer, my boy.”

The last thing that Ciel wanted to do was to give the man a chance to look at him closely and maybe see in his features some resemblance to his predecessor, but he didn’t have a choice. Reluctantly, he walked the few steps that separated him from Monsieur Guilloux. The Frenchman’s steely eyes detailed Ciel’s face for a protracted moment. Ciel forced himself to endure it without betraying his dread—he kept his face open and only showed the right amount of uncertainty for a servant who was afraid of being in trouble.

“How old are you, boy?” Monsieur Guilloux asked.

“I’m fifteen, sir,” Ciel answered; if Guilloux was starting to suspect his true identity, then it couldn’t hurt to muddle the waters a little.

“Fifteen, huh? So very young,” Monsieur Guilloux murmured. The disquiet that had rippled across his face for an instant was now gone, replaced by a calculated mask of congeniality. “Take your master’s jacket and go, child,” he said. “Don’t worry about the statue. It doesn’t look like it has broken, and even if it had, I’m not very fond of it anyway.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ciel said.

He turned away from the man, trying to compose his thoughts. If Guilloux had figured him out, then he’d decided not to confront him on the spot, which meant that he would probably order one of his servants to quietly dispose of him later—a knife between the ribs, a drop of poison in his drink, or maybe a blow behind the head like poor Coleman Paterson. How should Ciel deal with this?

“My lord,” he said once he was standing by Sebastian’s elbow. “You forgot to take your watch this morning.”

“You mean that _you_ forgot to give it to me, don’t you?” Sebastian said airily. Since he had his back on Monsieur Guilloux, Ciel allowed himself to address his butler a baleful glare. “You’re so forgetful, John.”

“I’m sorry. Here it is.”

Sebastian took the watch that Ciel was giving him and popped it open, pretending to check the time. “But this isn’t my watch, John!”

“Are you sure, my lord?”

“Of course I’m sure! Look at what is written inside.”

Sebastian turned the watch in such a way that Monsieur Guilloux could see it and not miss the inscription inside. Ciel heard Guilloux take a sharp breath.

“What—where did you find this?” he asked.

Ciel looked at the man just in time to see his hand creep toward the button that would allow him to call for his servants. 

“Sebastian!” Ciel snapped, and Sebastian sprung forward from his seat and launched himself at Guilloux, pinning his wrist to the arm of his chair. 

“Lord Phantomhive, what’s the meaning of this!” Monsieur Guilloux exclaimed. He seemed to be talking to Sebastian, but Ciel saw his eyes flicker at him. 

“Let’s drop the pretence, _monsieur_ ,” Ciel said. “You have figured out who I am, or at least you suspect it and you’re too careful a man to let me leave your mansion alive.”

Monsieur Guilloux’s nervous eyes flitted from Ciel to Sebastian, then to Ciel again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said tightly.

“I _am_ Earl Ciel Phantomhive. And if you knew my predecessor in the capacity that I think you did, then you know what other name I bear.”

“What do you want?” Guilloux asked, his voice flat, the hand that Sebastian wasn’t trapping curled in a bloodless grip around the arm of his chair.

“I already have what I came here for: a proof of the fate that befell your previous guest.”

“Are you going to kill me? If I scream—”

“It wouldn’t be very wise of you to do that,” Ciel said. “Sebastian, show him why he can’t hope for rescue faster than you can kill him.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The shadows in the room stretched and spread over the walls, over the window, plunging the room in a darkness that was only broken by the gleaming embers of Sebastian’s demonic eyes. Monsieur Guilloux didn’t scream, but Ciel could hear the harsh sounds of his panicked breathing. 

“You must be wondering what’s happening to you,” Ciel said. “You must be wondering what Sebastian _is_ , to be able to do this. I’ll let you consider the various options. Just know one thing: he has the power to find you and to hurt you wherever you are, and he follows _my_ orders.”

“What—what do you want?” Guilloux managed to utter.

“I’m not going to kill you. This wasn’t part of my assignment, and I don’t think that Her Majesty would want us to alert the French state with the death of one of their spies. No, I’m going to let you live. I’m going to let you go back to your occupations, both overt and covert.”

“But I—” Ciel heard Guilloux swallow, and when he spoke again his voice was much more assured. “If the crown is aware that I’m a spy, then I become useless to my country.”

“Precisely,” Ciel said. “Useless to the French, useful to my sovereign. You’ll pretend this never happened.”

“I won’t—”

Ciel sighed. He admired Guilloux’s ability to keep it together in the face of Sebastian’s true nature, but his resistance was getting tiresome.

“Sebastian,” he said. “Impress upon him how dire his situation is.”

The shadows around them rustled, becoming thicker. Ciel could feel movement, even if he couldn’t see it, and the memory came to him unbidden of the day Sebastian had been summoned, the way he had swirled around Ciel’s cage in various animal forms. Ciel dug his fingernails in his palms to distract himself. This had happened a long time ago, and he shouldn’t let mere memories have power over him. 

He heard Guilloux gasp, make small choking noises, and then the sound of Sebastian’s voice, smooth like a piece of silk fabric. “The eyes of Hell are now on you, Monsieur Guilloux. You’ll never be alone for another instant. If you do not keep your word, we’ll know it, and my master won’t be merciful a second time.”

Ciel rolled his eyes at Sebastian’s theatrics, but it was so dark in the room that his gesture was lost on its other occupants. Guilloux had been reduced to whimpering bits and pieces of prayers— _Seigneur, prends pitié… Sainte Marie, mère de Dieu, prends pitié…_ —and Ciel decided that it was time to put an end to the show.

“That’ll be enough, Sebastian,” he said. “I think that Monsieur Guilloux has understood our point.”

“Very well, master.”

The shadows retracted and daylight flooded the room, at least as much light as the pallid Breton sky could muster. Monsieur Guilloux’s face was as pale as the sky and he was shaking, his glasses perched askew on his nose and his eyes fixed on Sebastian, who looked human once again.

“Are we in agreement, _monsieur_?” Ciel asked, just to hammer the point one last time. 

“ _Oui_ … Yes, I mean, yes. I—I understand.”

“Excellent. Sebastian?” 

“Yes, young master?”

“I would like you to help me change. I’m leaving this house as Lord Phantomhive.”

Sebastian smiled. “Of course, my lord.”

They left Monsieur Guilloux a shivering mess, but by the time Ciel had changed, the man had pulled himself together well enough to be present as they departed, and to wish them safe travel as though nothing untoward had happened. The servants’ stupefied reactions to seeing Ciel’s in his own clothes and to hearing him be addressed as a lord by Guilloux and Sebastian brought no small amount of satisfaction to Ciel. As they were well-disciplined, though, they quickly aligned themselves on their master’s behaviour, and Ciel’s departure couldn’t have been more decorous if he’d been a foreign monarch on a visit. 

As their carriage rode along the path that would take them outside of the property, Ciel uncovered his right eye and peered through the window, trying to catch a glimpse of his night time apparition—he had to squint for a few seconds until he could see the pale, desolate figure of a man standing right next to the mansion’s chapel, almost too far to make it out. He blinked, and the figure was gone.

“Was there a ghost again, young master?” Sebastian asked.

“Oh, quiet, you,” Ciel said, putting his eyepatch back into place. “I’m having a nap. Wake me up when it’s time to stop.”

He closed his eyes and was quickly lulled to sleep by the rocking of the carriage. If he dreamt of ghosts, then he certainly didn’t intend to share it with anyone.


End file.
